Welcome to this audio recording of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”, one of the 56 short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson. This story, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published in The Strand Magazine in January 1892, is the seventh story of the collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The story begins with Watson visiting Holmes on the second morning after Christmas. Holmes shows him a battered old hat that was brought to him by a commissionaire named Peterson, who found it along with a Christmas goose in the street after a scuffle. Holmes deduces various details about the hat’s owner, Henry Baker, from the hat’s condition. He also learns that Peterson found a priceless gem, the Blue Carbuncle, inside the goose’s crop. The gem was stolen from the Countess of Morcar’s hotel suite, and a plumber named John Horner was arrested for the crime.
Holmes and Watson set out to trace the goose and the gem back to their origins, and to find out who really stole the Blue Carbuncle. Along the way, they encounter a variety of characters, such as a Covent Garden dealer, a goose breeder, and a hotel attendant. They also discover a surprising connection between the hat and the gem. The story is full of twists and turns, humor and suspense, and showcases Holmes’s remarkable powers of observation and deduction.
Enjoy listening to this classic of detective fiction!